Laurelwood Organic Portland Roast Espresso Stout

Cookie Monster and I shared a delicious beer from a local brewery tonight. Here are Cookie Monster's well thought-out notes and tasting nuances:

Laurelwood is one of the many, many local breweries that we frequent, and we've always enjoyed the happy hour and its $3 pints. This particular beer blends organic beer with organic coffee from a local coffee roaster.



You won't find many beers with a richer, darker color: it looks like espresso. It's intensely fragrant, with heavy coffee aromas and malty sweetness. When I opened the bottle, our kitchen filled with these pleasant smells. It pours thick, with a head reminiscent of the edges of a dry cappuccino, appropriately enough, where the milk foam absorbs the rich brown of the espresso below.

What surprised me upon tasting was how dry it actually tasted; the sweetness of the malts was diminutive compared to the acidic espresso flavor, creating a beer that smelled considerably sweeter than it tasted. The espresso is bold and the beer has a smooth mouthfeel, if a bit astringent, with a modest chocolate flavor hiding behind the roast coffee.

The Espresso Stout sports a solid 6.3% ABV. I enjoyed this beer, though I might have appreciated just a touch of additional sweetness to bring out more of the complexity of the espresso. Others have rated it well...I'd give it a 8/10.

And here is my take (this is pretty par for the course for us):
Mmmmmmm.
*burp*
Mmmmmmm.

Sushi Dinner Club

Here is a dinner party I recently had with some friends. We do a "dinner club" about once every three months or so. I'll let the photos speak for themselves this time. It was a lot of fun!

Holy Shit!

So, I just got a comment from a person I don't actually know. This is huge. People who read my blog include: well, right now, no one. But when I was posting semi-regularly the people who read my blog were my friends, my mom and Cookie Monster. I had a grand total of about five readers! Woo hoo! But now some dude named Jeremy (I don't know anyone named Jeremy) says he likes my blog! Oh, sweet sweet validation, how lovely thou art. Kinda makes me want to actually do something on my blog!
Hi Jeremy! Thanks for saying nice things. I'm blushing.

Not Dead

No, loyal reader, I'm not dead. Just haven't blogged in a spell. I've found that taking pictures of my food is kind of a pain in the ass. Plus I suck at it. So we'll see where things go from here. I did just post a delightful pizza/salad combo, so check that out!

ChezVCK Solo Dinner

Cookie Monster plays softball one night each week, and while I am a pretty loyal cheerleader, I draw the line at shaking my pom poms at games that begin at 9:45 p.m. So sometimes I dine alone. Here is a dinner I made during one such evening. It's the ChezVCK healthified version of pizza.

Here we have a whole-wheat pita. It's a whole one (not separated into halves/pockets) and fairly thin, so if you wanted to open it up and stuff it, it would be very messy. But it makes a good vehicle for pizza toppings. On this pizza I put a little marinara sauce, slices of turkey pepperoni (pretty much tastes exactly the same as regular, but 17 slices--a serving--is 80 calories, as opposed to eleventy billion like in regular pepperoni) and some chopped green bell pepper. I topped the pizza with cheddar and white cheese (I can't remember what kind exactly, but it was probably provolone) and stuck in under the broiler in our toaster oven. This gets the cheese nice n' bubbly.

I always have vegetables with dinner, so here's my vegetable portion: a large salad with the following:

*romaine lettuce

*cucumbers

*zucchini

*carrots

*pepperoncini

*a few green olives

*hot pickled peppers

and topped with Trader Joe's lowfat parmesan ranch

All together:

Pizza this way is quick, easy, healthy and, best of all, frickin' awesome!

Carrot Cake Oatmeal

I have been eating oatmeal a lot lately. Getting up to go to the gym before work, I discovered an extra half hour of time in the morning allows me to make something for breakfast instead of shoving a bowl of cereal in my face on my way out the door. My usual combination for oatmeal is:

*1/8 cup oatmeal

*1/8 cup oat bran

*~1-2 Tablespoons ground flax seeds

*1/2 mashed banana

I cook all that with 1/4 cup water on the stovetop until it gets nice and thick--this doesn't usually take too long. It's probably about 5 minutes.

Then comes the fun part: adding shit in. My go-to is Peanut Butter & Jelly oatmeal, which entails the above ingredients and spoonful each of jam and peanut butter (about 1 T each). I have two peanut butters right now from PB & Co. One in particular is absolutely transcendent: the White Chocolate Wonderful. Oh my god. It will change your life.

Ok, not really. I hate grandiose statements like that. But it will taste delicious. I also have the Cinnamon Raisin Swirl, which is ok, except the raisins in it are really small and hard--not so good. The cinnamon is sortof grainy in the peanut butter, which is actually ok with me.

Anyhoo, I've been inspired to make a lot of different kinds of oatmeal by the following bloggers: Kath, Tina, Heather and Caitlin. This particular idea came from Kath (find it here).

I started with my usual base, then added in:

*3/4 of a grated carrot

*splash of vanilla extract

* 1-2 T brown sugar

*1 T raisins

And here's what I got:

I even made the "frosting" by mixing a little nonfat Greek yogurt with 1 T maple syrup.

So I pretty much was not a fan of this oatmeal. I did not really get any "carrot cake"; it pretty much tasted like oatmeal with carrots in it. I didn't use the mango or pineapple like Kath suggests, so maybe it was missing an extra element of sweet, but I don't think I'd try this again.

I was definitely original, though!